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diff --git a/lib/ebooks/devils/W.html b/lib/ebooks/devils/W.html new file mode 100644 index 00000000..49e9e950 --- /dev/null +++ b/lib/ebooks/devils/W.html @@ -0,0 +1,275 @@ +<?xml version="1.0"?> +<!DOCTYPE package PUBLIC "+//ISBN 0-9673008-1-9//DTD OEB 1.0 Package//EN" + "http://openebook.org/dtds/oeb-1.0/oebdoc1.dtd"> +<html> +<head> +<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/x-oeb1-document; charset=utf-8" /> +<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/x-oeb1-css" href="devil.css" /> +<title>The Devil’s Dictionary: W</title> +</head> +<body lang="en-US"> + + +<h1>W</h1> + +<p class="firstpara">W (double U) has, +of all the letters in our alphabet, the only cumbrous name, the names of the +others being monosyllabic. This advantage of the Roman alphabet over the Grecian +is the more valued after audibly spelling out some simple Greek word, like <i>epixoriambikos</i>. Still, it is now thought +by the learned that other agencies than the difference of the two alphabets may +have been concerned in the decline of “the glory that was Greece” and the rise +of “the grandeur that was Rome.” There can be no doubt, however, that by +simplifying the name of W (calling it “wow,” for example) our civilization +could be, if not promoted, at least better endured.</p> + +<p class="entry"><span class="def">Wall Street</span>, <span class="pos">n.</span> A +symbol for sin for every devil to rebuke. That Wall Street is a den of thieves +is a belief that serves every unsuccessful thief in place of a hope in Heaven. Even +the great and good Andrew Carnegie has made his profession of faith in the +matter.</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<p class="poetry">Carnegie the dauntless +has uttered his call To battle: “The brokers are parasites all!” Carnegie, +Carnegie, you’ll never prevail;</p> + +<p class="poetry">Keep the wind of your slogan to belly your sail, Go back to your isle of perpetual brume, +Silence your pibroch, doff tartan and plume:</p> + +<p class="poetry">Ben Lomond is calling his son from the fray—</p> + +<p class="poetry">Fly, fly from the region of Wall Street away! While still you’re possessed of a single baubee (I +wish it were pledged to endowment of me) ‘Twere wise to retreat from the wars +of finance Lest its value decline ere your credit advance. For a man ‘twixt a +king of finance and the sea, Carnegie, Carnegie, your tongue is too free!</p> + +<p class="citeauth">Anonymus Bink</p> +</div> + +<p class="entry"><span class="def">war</span>, <span class="pos">n.</span> A by-product of the arts of +peace. The most menacing political condition is a period of +international amity. The student of history who has not been taught +to expect the unexpected may justly boast himself inaccessible to the +light. “In time of peace prepare for war” has a deeper meaning than +is commonly discerned; it means, not merely that all things earthly +have an end—that change is the one immutable and eternal law—but +that the soil of peace is thickly sown with the seeds of war and +singularly suited to their germination and growth. It was when Kubla Khan +had decreed his “stately pleasure dome”—when, that is to say, there +were peace and fat feasting in Xanadu—that he heard from afar +Ancestral voices prophesying war.</p> + +<p class="indentpara">One of the +greatest of poets, Coleridge was one of the wisest of men, and it was not for +nothing that he read us this parable. Let us have a little less of “hands +across the sea,” and a little more of that elemental distrust that is the +security of nations. War loves to come like a thief in the night; professions +of eternal amity provide the night.</p> + +<p class="entry"><span class="def">Washingtonian</span>, <span class="pos">n.</span> A +Potomac tribesman who exchanged the privilege of governing himself for the +advantage of good government. In justice to him it should be said that he did +not want to.</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<p class="poetry">They took away his vote and gave instead<br /> +The right, when he had earned, to <i>eat</i> his bread.<br /> +In vain—he clamors for his “boss,” pour soul,<br /> +To come again and part him from his roll.</p> + +<p class="citeauth">Offenbach Stutz</p> +</div> + +<p class="entry"><span class="def">weaknesses</span>, <span class="pos">n.</span>pl. Certain +primal powers of Tyrant Woman wherewith she holds dominion over the male of her +species, binding him to the service of her will and paralyzing his rebellious +energies.</p> + +<p class="entry"><span class="def">weather</span>, <span class="pos">n.</span> The +climate of the hour. A permanent topic of conversation among persons whom it +does not interest, but who have inherited the tendency to chatter about it from +naked arboreal ancestors whom it keenly concerned. The setting up official +weather bureaus and their maintenance in mendacity prove that even governments +are accessible to suasion by the rude forefathers of the jungle.</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<p class="poetry">Once I dipt into +the future far as human eye could see, And I saw the Chief Forecaster, dead as +any one can be—</p> + +<p class="poetry">Dead and damned +and shut in Hades as a liar from his birth, With a record of unreason seldom +paralleled on earth. While I looked he reared him solemnly, that incadescent +youth, From the coals that he’d preferred to the advantages of truth. He cast +his eyes about him and above him; then he wrote On a slab of thin asbestos what +I venture here to quote—</p> + +<p class="poetry">For I read it in +the rose-light of the everlasting glow:</p> + +<p class="poetry">“Cloudy; variable +winds, with local showers; cooler; snow.”</p> + +<p class="citeauth">Halcyon Jones</p> +</div> + +<p class="entry"><span class="def">wedding</span>, <span class="pos">n.</span> A +ceremony at which two persons undertake to become one, one undertakes to become +nothing, and nothing undertakes to become supportable.</p> + +<p class="entry"><span class="def">werewolf</span>, <span class="pos">n.</span> A +wolf that was once, or is sometimes, a man. All werewolves are of evil +disposition, having assumed a bestial form to gratify a beastial appetite, but +some, transformed by sorcery, are as humane and is consistent with an acquired +taste for human flesh.</p> + +<p>Some Bavarian peasants having caught a wolf one evening, tied it to a post by the tail and +went to bed. The next morning nothing was there! Greatly perplexed, they +consulted the local priest, who told them that their captive was undoubtedly a +werewolf and had resumed its human for during the night. “The next time that +you take a wolf,” the good man said, “see that you chain it by the leg, and in +the morning you will find a Lutheran.”</p> + +<p class="entry"><span class="def">Whangdepootenawah,</span> <span class="pos">n.</span> In the +Ojibwa tongue, disaster; an unexpected affliction that strikes hard.</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<p class="poetry">Should you ask me whence this laughter,</p> +<p class="poetry">Whence this audible big-smiling,</p> +<p class="poetry">With its labial extension,</p> +<p class="poetry">With its maxillar distortion</p> +<p class="poetry">And its diaphragmic rhythmus</p> +<p class="poetry">Like the billowing of an ocean,</p> +<p class="poetry">Like the shaking of a carpet,</p> +<p class="poetry">I should answer, I should tell you:</p> +<p class="poetry">From the great deeps of the spirit,</p> +<p class="poetry">From the unplummeted abysmus</p> +<p class="poetry">Of the soul this laughter welleth</p> +<p class="poetry">As the fountain, the gug-guggle,</p> +<p class="poetry">Like the river from the canon [sic],</p> +<p class="poetry">To entoken and give warning</p> +<p class="poetry">That my present mood is sunny.</p> +<p class="poetry">Should you ask me further question—</p> +<p class="poetry">Why the great deeps of the spirit,</p> +<p class="poetry">Why the unplummeted abysmus</p> +<p class="poetry">Of the soule extrudes this laughter,</p> +<p class="poetry">This all audible big-smiling,</p> +<p class="poetry">I should answer, I should tell you</p> +<p class="poetry">With a white heart, tumpitumpy,</p> +<p class="poetry">With a true tongue, honest Injun:</p> +<p class="poetry">William Bryan, he has Caught It,</p> +<p class="poetry">Caught the Whangdepootenawah!</p> +<p class="poetry">Is’t the sandhill crane, the shankank,</p> +<p class="poetry">Standing in the marsh, the kneedeep,</p> +<p class="poetry">Standing silent in the kneedeep</p> +<p class="poetry">With his wing-tips crossed behind him</p> +<p class="poetry">And his neck close-reefed before him,</p> +<p class="poetry">With his bill, his william, buried</p> +<p class="poetry">In the down upon his bosom,</p> +<p class="poetry">With his head retracted inly,</p> +<p class="poetry">While his shoulders overlook it?</p> +<p class="poetry">Does the sandhill crane, the shankank,</p> +<p class="poetry">Shiver grayly in the north wind,</p> +<p class="poetry">Wishing he had died when little,</p> +<p class="poetry">As the sparrow, the chipchip, does?</p> +<p class="poetry">No ‘tis not the Shankank standing,</p> +<p class="poetry">Standing in the gray and dismal</p> +<p class="poetry">Marsh, the gray and dismal kneedeep.</p> +<p class="poetry">No, ‘tis peerless William Bryan</p> +<p class="poetry">Realizing that he’s Caught It,</p> +<p class="poetry">Caught the Whangdepootenawah!</p> +</div> + +<p class="entry"><span class="def">wheat</span>, <span class="pos">n.</span> A cereal +from which a tolerably good whisky can with some difficulty be made, and which +is used also for bread. The French are said to eat more bread <i>per capita</i> of population than any other +people, which is natural, for only they know how to make the stuff palatable.</p> + +<p class="entry"><span class="def">white</span>, <span class="pos">adj.</span> and n. +Black.</p> + +<p class="entry"><span class="def">widow</span>, <span class="pos">n.</span> A +pathetic figure that the Christian world has agreed to take humorously, +although Christ’s tenderness towards widows was one of the most marked features +of his character.</p> + +<p class="entry"><span class="def">wine</span>, <span class="pos">n.</span> Fermented +grape-juice known to the Women’s Christian Union as “liquor,” sometimes as +“rum.” Wine, madam, is God’s next best gift to man.</p> + +<p class="entry"><span class="def">wit</span>, <span class="pos">n.</span> The salt +with which the American humorist spoils his intellectual cookery by leaving it +out.</p> + +<p class="entry"><span class="def">witch</span>, <span class="pos">n.</span> (1) Any +ugly and repulsive old woman, in a wicked league with the devil. (2) A +beautiful and attractive young woman, in wickedness a league beyond the devil.</p> + +<p class="entry"><span class="def">witticism</span>, <span class="pos">n.</span> A +sharp and clever remark, usually quoted, and seldom noted; what the Philistine +is pleased to call a “joke.”</p> + +<p class="entry"><span class="def">woman</span>, <span class="pos">n.</span></p> + +<p>An animal usually +living in the vicinity of Man, and having a rudimentary susceptibility to +domestication. It is credited by many of the elder zoologists with a certain +vestigial docility acquired in a former state of seclusion, but naturalists of +the postsusananthony period, having no knowledge of the seclusion, deny the +virtue and declare that such as creation’s dawn beheld, it roareth now. The +species is the most widely distributed of all beasts of prey, infesting all +habitable parts of the globe, from Greeland’s spicy mountains to India’s moral +strand. The popular name (wolfman) is incorrect, for the creature is of the cat +kind. The woman is lithe and graceful in its movement, especially the American +variety (<i>felis pugnans</i>), is omnivorous and can be taught not to talk.</p> + +<p class="citeauth">Balthasar Pober</p> + +<p class="entry"><span class="def">worms’-meat</span>, <span class="pos">n.</span> The +finished product of which we are the raw material. The contents of the Taj +Mahal, the Tombeau Napoleon and the Granitarium. Worms’-meat is usually +outlasted by the structure that houses it, but “this too must pass away.” Probably +the silliest work in which a human being can engage is construction of a tomb +for himself. The solemn purpose cannot dignify, but only accentuates by +contrast the foreknown futility.</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<p class="poetry">Ambitious fool! so mad to be a show!<br /> +How profitless the labor you bestow<br /> +Upon a dwelling whose magnificence<br /> +The tenant neither can admire nor know.<br /> +Build deep, build high, build massive as you can,<br /> +The wanton grass-roots will defeat the plan<br /> +By shouldering asunder all the stones<br /> +In what to you would be a moment’s span.<br /> +Time to the dead so all unreckoned flies<br /> +That when your marble is all dust, arise,<br /> +If wakened, stretch your limbs and yawn—<br /> +You’ll think you scarcely can have closed your eyes.<br /> +What though of all man’s works your tomb alone +Should stand till Time himself be overthrown?<br /> +Would it advantage you to dwell therein<br /> +Forever as a stain upon a stone?</p> + +<p class="citeauth">Joel Huck</p> +</div> + +<p class="entry"><span class="def">worship</span>, <span class="pos">n.</span> Homo +Creator’s testimony to the sound construction and fine finish of Deus Creatus. A +popular form of abjection, having an element of pride.</p> + +<p class="entry"><span class="def">wrath</span>, <span class="pos">n.</span> Anger of +a superior quality and degree, appropriate to exalted characters and momentous +occasions; as, “the wrath of God,” “the day of wrath,” etc. Amongst the +ancients the wrath of kings was deemed sacred, for it could usually command the +agency of some god for its fit manifestation, as could also that of a priest. The +Greeks before Troy were so harried by Apollo that they jumped out of the +frying-pan of the wrath of Cryses into the fire of the wrath of Achilles, +though Agamemnon, the sole offender, was neither fried nor roasted. A similar +noted immunity was that of David when he incurred the wrath of Yahveh by +numbering his people, seventy thousand of whom paid the penalty with their +lives. God is now Love, and a director of the census performs his work without +apprehension of disaster.</p> + +</body> +</html>
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